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YTHM    AND 
RECREATION 


BY 

JOSEPH  LEE 

[ident  of  the  Playground  and  Recreation  Association 
of  America 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 
lEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


;i|:  ■;■:'; 'Hi 

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I  AMERICAN  HOME  SERIES 


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NORMAN  E.  RICHAROS0N,:"?.ditor-;i^-'-- 


3^ 


RHYTHM    AND 
RECREATION 


BY 
JOSEPH  LEE 

President  of  the  Playground  and  Recreation  Association 
of  America 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


of  Charities  and  Correction,  is  reprinted  as  a  unit  in  the  American 
Home  Series  by  special  permission  of  the  author. 


qtO- 


Nature  or  Sexual  Attraction    //^rtCyX^ 

WE  shall  approach  the  question  before  us  not  as  a 
problem  of  evil  but  as  a  problem  of  good,  as  a 
question  of  how  to  keep  this  great  budding  force 
of  nature,  the  mutual  attraction  of  the  sexes,  to 
its  true  task  of  producing  strength  and  beauty, 
instead  of  permitting  it  to  go  to  waste  or  worse. 

I.  The  first  thing  to  remember  is  that  this  mu- 
tual attraction  is  not  one  but  many  things.  Its 
issue  is  all  the  way  from  the  worst  to  the  best  we 
know.  If  it  has  produced  much  of  the  evil  in  the 
world — if  it  is  so  high  an  explosive  that  the  spiritual 
doctors  in  many  ages  have  forbidden  it  to  the  holy 
and  to  the  carefully  nurtured  young — it  is  also  the 
source  of  the  best  things  in  life.  True  love  is  the 
dearest  possession  of  the  race.  Its  presence  would 
redeem  a  world  of  ugliness.  Romance  is  of  the 
stuff  that  makes  life  worth  living — partakes  of 
the  ultimate,  of  what  the  rest  is  for. 

II.  Sexual  attraction  is  never  simple,  it  is  not 
merely  all  things  to  all  men,  it  is  apt  to  be  a  great 
many  things  to  each  man,  whenever  it  happens 
to  him. 

In  the  first  place  no  major  instinct  ever  acts 
alone.  Human  nature  is  a  sounding-board,  which, 
when  one  note  is  struck,  gives  forth  sympathetic 
vibrations,  discords,  harmonies,  overtones.  This 
note  especially  is  so  deep  in  us  that  there  is  very 
little  in  our  nature  that  its  awakening  may  not 
touch.  The  instinct  of  the  chase  is  aroused  in 
pursuit  of  the  flying  nymph.  The  fighting  instinct, 
enlisted  in  supplanting  rivals,  may  be  stronger 
than  the  original  motive,  and  sometimes  survives 
it.  Where  Venus  is  present  Mars  is  not  often 
far  away.  George  Eliot  says  there  is  always  some- 
thing maternal  even  in   a  girlish  love.     Again,   at 

3 


0^>    i    ') -2 


4  RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION 

the  heart  of  true  love  there  is  a  David  and  Jonathar 
relation  of  pure  friendship — camaraderie — a  marriage 
of  the  qualities  held  in  common,  supplementing 
that  of  opposing  attributes.  There  is,  further,  in  tht 
social  intercourse  of  boys  and  girls  a  large  element  o) 
pure  gregariousness.  A  crowd  of  them  at  a  ball 
game  is  not  very  different  from  one  made  up  of 
the  boy  undergraduates  alone.  In  short,  love 
itself,  as  the  gossip  concerning  Venus  has  long 
suggested,  is  very  susceptible  and  always  brings 
other  emotions  in  its  train. 

Then  in  both  boy  and  girl,  especially  in  the  girl, 
the  awakening  of  this  feeling  is  so  associated  with 
the  whole  awakening  of  life  that  it  is  hard  to  say 
where  the  desire  to  live  leaves  off  and  that  for 
love  begins.  To  get  into  the  game,  to  drink  deep 
of  the  cup,  to  spend  and  be  spent,  to  have  lived 
and  loved,  to  know  the  joy  and  beauty  of  life,  its 
heights  and  depths — in  some  such  formless  way 
to  every  young  creature  comes  the  great  vital 
impulse. 

Girls  coming  out  in  society  are  well  named  buds. 
It  is  the  budding  power  of  mother  Nature  that  is 
in  them.  It  is  the  universal  power  of  life  and  growth, 
the  strongest  power  there  is,  that  they  are  charged 
with.  How  far  this  force  is  committed  to  one  form 
of  discharge  or  another  is  different  in  every  case, 
and  in  every  case  is  difficult  to  know,  but  that  the 
form  varies  much  according  to  suggestion  and 
opportunity  is  unquestionable,  and  constitutes  our 
great  responsibility. 

III.  Besides  being  attended  by  other  impulses, 
the  love  instinct  itself  is  not  a  simple  one.  Ro- 
mantic love  is  something  quite  different  from 
mere  desire,  and  has  as  much  influence  in  checking 
as  in  producing  it.  Romeo's  love  for  JuHet  kills 
his  feeling  for  Rosalind  not  merely  as  having  a 
different  object  but  as  being  in  its  essence  an  op- 
posing force. 

The  truth  is  that  in  this  matter  of  the  mating  of 
human  beings,  even  in  its  simplest  terms,  we  en- 


RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION  5 

counter  a  larger  emotional  phenomenon  than  that 
of  sex  alone.  There  are  other  motives  present  in 
the  very  passion  itself  that  materially  affect  the 
whole  relation.  The  element  of  personal,  romantic 
love  is,  it  is  true,  an  integral  part  of  sex  attrac- 
tion— forty  thousand  brothers  could  not  with  all 
their  quantity  of  love  make  up  my  sum.  But  it 
is  aimed  at  something  different  from  mere  repro- 
duction. With  its  advent  there  came  a  new  thing 
into  the  world. 

This  deeper,  more  lasting,  element  in  human 
love  has  solid  biological  foundation.  Its  absence, 
indeed,  would  have  made  a  controlling  factor  of 
our  life  inexplicable.  What  has  chiefly  caused  the 
rise  of  man  and  of  the  higher  animals  above  their 
myriad  competitors  has  been  the  great  phenomenon 
of  infancy,  that  long  period  during  which  the  young 
are  in  a  plastic  state,  with  a  resulting  capacity  for 
learning  and  for  adaptation.  The  existence  of  in- 
fancy, in  its  turn,  depends  upon  the  home  created 
and  maintained  by  a  monogamous  pair  who  feed 
and  shelter  and  defend  their  young  during  the  period 
of  helplessness.  But  to  create  the  family  and  home, 
to  build  the  nest,  to  sustain  the  loyalty  of  the 
male  through  the  long  infancy  of  the  offspring, 
required  an  emotional  basis  far  deeper  than  that 
which  had  sufficed  for  less  permanent  relations. 
This  great  phenomenon  of  infancy,  nature's  latest 
biological  invention,  responsible  in  the  main  for 
man's  supremacy,  is  the  creature,  the  outgrowth, 
of  the  deeper  and  nobler  elements  of  human  love. 
The  lover  is,  biologically  speaking,  the  decisive  ele- 
ment in  human  progress. 

The  Practical  Problem 

Our  practical  problem  is  how  to  develop  the  best 
in  this  relation  among  all  the  vast  possibilities 
that  it  contains. 

I.  The  solution  is  partly  quantitative.  There 
cannot  be  too  much  love  in  the  world,  but  there 


6  RHYTHM  AND  RF.CREATION 

is  such  a  thing  as  too  much  love-making.  It  is 
not  properly  a  routine  occupation,  and  if  too  steadily 
pursued,  will  generate  more  emotion  than  can  be 
safely  handled. 

In  part  the  way  to  escape  this  danger  is,  as  we 
all  know,  by  creating  a  diversion,  providing  other 
occupations  and  pursuits.  This  motive  is  largely 
behind  the  great  modern  belief  in  athletics.  It 
created  the  muscular  Christianity  of  Thomas 
Hughes'  day,  from  which  we  still  benefit,  and  is 
partly  embodied  in  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  It  is  also 
largely  responsible  for  school  extension,  for  boys' 
and  girls'  clubs,  for  social  centers  and,  indeed, 
for  all  the  lines  of  development  we  shall  discuss. 

Athletics  for  girls  have  not  the  same  instinctive 
basis  as  in  the  case  of  boys,  and  can  never  take 
anything  like  the  same  place.  Hard  romping  games 
may  nevertheless  greatly  benefit  girls  in  every  way, 
especially  in  the  matter  of  emotional  stability. 
Miss  Kennard  tells  me  that  it  is  necessary  in  order 
to  develop  true  tom-boys  to  catch  them  young, 
the  crucial  time  in  this  respect  being  not  at  the 
age  of  fourteen,  but  somewhere  in  the  period  from 
eight  to  twelve.  If  they  do  not  become  tom-boys 
then  through  habitual  participation  in  lively,  squeal- 
ing games,  they  will  be  foredoomed  to  premature 
young  ladyhood. 

From  this  purely  quantitative  point  of  view  the 
question  is  one  of  maintaining  due  proportion. 
Every  one  is  familiar  with  Leigh  Hunt's  advice  to 
young  ladies  that  they  should  keep  a  debit  and 
credit  account,  balancing  so  many  hours  crying 
over  a  novel  by  a  proportionate  time  given  to 
sweeping  the  floor  or  other  less  harrowing  pursuits. 

II.  But  there  are  more  intimate  ways  of  dealing 
with  the  problem.  It  is  not  all  one  of  quantity. 
Besides,  what  we  mainly  want  to  do  is  not  to  side- 
track this  great  emotion,  but  to  preserve  and  util- 
ize it,  by  encouraging  its  safer  and  its  nobler  ex- 
pression. The  lamentable  thing  is  not  the  evil  that 
exists  but  the  good  that  fails. 


RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION  7 

1.  Athletics  have  partly  this  effect.  They  are, 
in  part,  an  expression  of  the  secondary  sexual  in- 
stinct of  competition.  They  are  a  contemporary 
form  of  chivalry,  which  is  the  idealization  of  the 
sex  relation.  (Note  it  must  be  athletics — hard 
competitive  games,  not  cat's  cradle.) 

2.  A  good  prescription,  I  think,  in  the  case  of 
boys,  is  the  encouragement  of  romance.  It  would 
be  a  good  plan  for  every  boy,  before  he  becomes 
too  wise  to  take  them  seriously,  to  read  Scott  and 
Lorna  Doone.  The  better  sort  of  love  songs,  like 
the  Scotch  ballads,  have  the  same  effect.  Burns 
may  not  have  been  a  model  of  virtue  in  his  own 
life,  but  his  poetic  imagination  enabled  him  to 
state  the  case  in  a  way  to  make  the  blank  prose 
of  mere  sensuousness  abhorrent.  There  is  no 
better  police  power  than  romantic  love.  As  a  mere 
question  of  safety  it  is  a  good  investment.  Nothing 
will  make  a  lower  satisfaction  look  more  flat  and 
tawdry  than  a  remembered  boyish  ideal. 

With  girls,  I  am  credibly  informed,  again  by 
Miss  Kennard,  the  case  is  different.  They  have, 
as  a  rule,  too  much  rather  than  too  little  of  romance, 
and  can  be  trusted  to  have  enough  of  it. 

3.  Then  there  is  novel-reading.  It  is  a  remark- 
able fact,  and  I  think  a  notable  confirmation  of  my 
theory  that  love-making  is  many  things,  that  we 
can  safely  play  with  this  emotion  to  an  almost  un- 
limited extent  as  presented  in  good  literature.  Of 
the  millions  of  novels  read  every  year  (counting 
each  one  each  time)  the  effect  of  those  which  deal 
with  the  matter  in  the  right  spirit  is  chiefly  bene- 
ficial. Exception  should,  perhaps,  be  made  in  the 
case  of  the  modern  English  school,  which  one  could 
forgive  if  it  claimed  only  to  have  invented  sex  and 
not  to  have  a  patent  on  it. 

Good  literature,  especially  in  the  form  of  novels, 
in  which  it  is  most  likely  to  be  consumed,  is  of 
great  importance  in  our  problem.  After  all,  the 
chief  intercourse  of  human  beings  is  in  the  form 
of  talk;  and  the  best  gift  to  any  set  of  young  people 


8  RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION 

is  something  worth  while  to  talk  about.  The  heavi- 
est indictment  of  war  is  still,  as  Madame  De  Stael 
complained,  that  it  spoils  conversation.  After  they 
have  said  "Hello,"  "Been  to  the  Little  Pink  Idiot.?" 
and  "See  the  Blue  Sox  lick  the  Dwarfs?"  what — 
under  the  yellow  light  of  our  present  written  dis- 
pensation— is  left  to  talk  about.''  The  idle  tongue 
— though  idle,  never  still — is  a  more  dangerous 
member  than  the  idle  hand.  And  what  worthy 
occupation  can  it  find  among  the  prevailing  interests 
of  our  young  folks  at  the  present  time?  I  put  novel- 
reading  high  as  a  beneficial  agent  in  this  whole 
matter. 

4.  Art  is  another  pursuit  which,  besides  em- 
ploying energy  and  occupying  time,  is  of  specific 
value  as  satisfying  a  need  of  emotional  expression 
that  would  otherwise  take  a  sexual  form.  Some 
people  think  that  all  art  is  sexual.  Certainly,  all 
the  arts  afford  a  ready  channel  for  this  emotion. 
Many  a  masterpiece  has  been  wrought  out  in  the 
heat  of  a  great  passion.  Singing,  poetry,  and  other 
forms  of  music  are  love's  native  tongue.  Every 
bird  has  a  love  song,  and  every  one  in  love,  or  at 
the  special  period  of  love,  has  a  need  to  sing  and 
must  suffer  almost  physical  pain  lacking  that 
form  of  utterance. 

We  must  cultivate  in  our  boys  and  girls  every 
form  of  art  for  which  we  find  capacity — or,  rather, 
not  cultivate,  but  cease  from  stifling.  Song  is  as 
natural  to  a  young  creature  of  our  owm  species  as 
to  a  bird.  It  is  a  voice  lost  to  us  through  the  in- 
hibitions of  a  too  critical  civilization.  We  must 
restore  this  natural  voice — if  in  cultivated  form, 
so  much  the  better,  but  in  some  form  at  all  events. 
The  monotonous  chant  of  the  Spanish  peasant 
girl,  or  even  the  frank,  unquestioning  bellow  of  the 
young  Italian,  is  better  than  our  artificial,  clod- 
like silence. 

We  must  not,  mdeed,  forget  that  art  may  be  a 
stimulant,  may  excite  more  than  it  satisfies.  Just 
what  determines  which  of  these  two  results  shall 


RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION  9 

be  produced — and  so  gives  a  balance  to  one  side 
or  the  other  of  the  account — we  must  presently 
consider  in  studying  the  ways  of  dealing  with  the 
great  rhythmic  instinct  which  is  so  largely  the 
source  of  all  the  arts. 

Improvement  of  Conditions 

This  question  of  rhythm  brings  me  to  the  present 
practical  center  of  our  problem:  the  improvement 
of  the  actual  conditions  under  which  our  boys  and 
girls  are  brought  together.  Just  now  there  are 
in  this  country  three  conditions  that  make  this 
problem  especially  acute. 

First,  there  is  the  exclusive  society  of  those 
under  twenty-one  which  we  must  learn  both  to 
recognize  as  satisfying  a  sound  moral  demand, 
and  also  to  modify,  especially  by  showing  children 
of  immigrants  that  Americanism  does  not  consist 
in  despising  one's  parents  nor  in  scorning  the  ideals 
that  have  given  beauty  and  nobility  to  their  lives. 

Second,  there  is  the  changing  status  of  women 
from  one  derived  from  the  family  relation  alone 
to  one  based  partly  on  direct  individual  relation 
to  the  political  and  industrial  community.  This 
shift  in  status  has  made  it  impossible  to  handle 
our  problem  wholly  through  the  family  relation. 
The  family  is  not  dead  yet,  and  will  not  die  so  long 
as  there  is  anything  of  human  nature  left  in  man; 
and  we  must  continue  to  act  largely  through  home 
influence.  For  the  rest,  our  general  policy  must 
be  to  mobilize  the  mothers — to  turn  loose  upon 
society  as  a  whole  that  surplus  of  maternal  power 
and  instinct  that  is  left  over  through  decreased 
opportunity  in  the  home. 

A  third,  pervasive  and  overmastering  condition 
in  the  meeting  of  our  boys  and  girls,  the  one  that 
just  now  makes  the  problem  especially  acute,  is 
in  the  wave  of  rhythm  that  is  passing  over  this 
country  at  the  present  time.  Dancing  has  become 
a  national  obsession,  amounting  almost  to  a  mania. 


lo  RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION 

both  as  to  amount  and  kind.  Folk  dancing,  social 
dancing,  aesthetic  and  dramatic  dancing,  dancing 
in  imitation  of  the  less  graceful  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals, dancing  by  old  and  young,  by  rich  and  poor, 
by  the  wise  and  the  foolish — dancing  by  all  kinds 
of  persons  and  in  every  variety  of  form — is  in- 
cessant in  the  dance  hall,  on  the  playground,  on  the 
stage,  and  in  the  street.  It  has  invaded  the  very 
ballroom  and  captured  professional  "society"  itself. 
The  Bridge  of  Avignon,  celebrated  in  song,  is  nothing 
to  America  at  the  present  time. 

The  rhythmic  madness  is  not  confined  to  dancing 
proper — or  improper.  Our  popular  songs  are  all 
dance  music,  and  are  kept  running  in  our  heads 
so  that  we  waltz  through  our  sermons,  write  pre- 
scriptions in  three-four  time,  and  add  up  columns 
to  the  music  of  the  Grizzly  Bear.  Even  our  politics 
are  set  to  metre.  The  failure  of  Mr.  Taft  to  cap- 
ture the  popular  imagination  is  traceable  to  a 
deficient  sense  of  rhythm.  The  people  are  all 
dancing  to  the  Roosevelt  rag-time,  the  Bryan 
waltz,  or  the  La  Follette  dithyrambic.  Our  very 
conversation  is  a  song  and  dance. 

The  effect  of  this  wave  of  rhythm  upon  the 
meeting  of  our  boys  and  girls  is  seen  in  the  great 
increase  in  the  amount  and  what  we  may  perhaps 
call  the  intensity  of  social  dancing.  The  dancing 
of  young  people  together,  when  permitted,  has  in- 
deed always  been,  and  always  will  be,  popular. 
All  the  great  forms  of  recreation  are  built  where 
two  main  instincts  meet.  Our  national  games, 
for  instance — including  football,  baseball,  basket 
ball,  bridge — are  all  at  the  junction  of  the  com- 
petitive instinct  with  that  of  team  play.  Each 
of  them  satisfies,  besides,  a  number  of  minor  in- 
stincts such  as  striking,  chasing,  wrestling,  throw 
ing  at  a  mark,  and  the  great  gambling,  Micawber- 
like  instinct  of  waiting  for  something  to  turn  up 
— as  handed  down  to  us  from  centuries  of  watching 
by  the  pool  or  forest  path  for  something  good 
to  eat. 


RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION  ii 

Rhythm,  especially,  is  the  most  pervasive  of  all 
these  active  impulses.  It  is  the  female  instinct, 
always  married  to  some  other  in  the  production 
of  a  satisfying  blend.  But  that  a  popular  diver- 
sion should  be  established  where  rhythm  and  sex 
attraction  meet  was  in  any  case  inevitable.  The 
present  situation  simply  accentuates  a  permanent 
condition. 

Rhythmic  Instinct 

I  want  to  speak  more  generally  about  the  rhythmic 
instinct  and  its  relation  to  sex  expression,  of  what 
v/e  are  going  to  do  with  it  and  what  it  is  likely  to 
do  with  us. 

1.  Rhythm  in  the  first  place  is  our  measure  of 
time.  It  is,  or  comes  near  being,  the  very  substance 
of  time  to  us,  our  only  method  of  conceiving  of  it. 
It  enables  us  to  drive  a  peg  into  a  certain  point 
in  time  so  we  can  identify  it  as  we  can  with  space 
— is  the  source  of  our  whole  arithmetic  of  duration. 
I  believe  it  is  a  more  ultimate  measure,  means  more 
to  our  feeling,  than  the  sense  of  space,  and  giyes 
the  latter  its  chief  reality.  Rhythm  is  thus  a  very 
practical  thing.  I  believe  we  could  hardly  do  a 
physical  act  without  it.  Foresight  of  the  swing 
and  ictus  of  a  movement  is  a  prerequisite  of  its 
performance — as  I  once  discovered  when  learning 
to  jump  a  horse  over  a  fence.  I  found  I  landed^ 
uniformly  and  with  precision,  just  behind  his  ears, 
until  1  learned  the  rhythm  of  the  motion  and  could 
foresee  it  with  some  accuracy  before  it  started. 

2.  Rhythm,  I  think,  is  very  deep  in  personality. 
The  long-suffering  word  "temperament"  ought  at 
least  to  mean  rhythm — the  particular  tempo  or 
motif  you  are  set  to.  The  difference  between  Celt 
and  Saxon  is  thus  truly  said  to  be  a  matter  of  tem- 
perament.    It  is  the  quick  time  against  the  slow. 

3.  Rhythm  not  only  creates  time  for  us;  it  also 
kills  time.  It  is  rhythm  that  through  the  long 
centuries  has  made  monotony  bearable  to  people 
who  have  had  to  walk  or  row  all  day,  or  knit  or 


12  RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION 

spin  or  tend  the  loom.  We  talk  of  being  tired 
of  routine,  but  more  people  dread  to  get  away  from 
it.  It  is  hypnotic.  That  is  one  reason  why  chil- 
dred  like  to  swing,  for  swinging  is  said  by  high 
authority  to  be  a  form  of  sleep.  Rhythm  may  thus 
be  a  narcotic,  putting  the  finer  sensibilities  to  sleep, 
and  leaving  the  rest  to  act  on  without  them.  Such 
lulling  to  rest  is  a  great  boon  when  the  road  is 
long  and  stretches  straight  ahead.  The  captain 
can  sometimes  safely  set  the  course  and  go  to  sleep. 
But  sometimes  such  sleep  is  very  dangerous.  Al- 
cohol, for  instance,  as  the  doctors  have  now  dis- 
covered, acts  chiefly  not  as  a  stimulant  but  as  an 
anaesthetic.  Its  festive  and  outwardly  p»ositive 
effects  are  due  not  to  increased  but  to  diminished 
self-activity.  It  lets  off  the  brakes  of  custom, 
conscience,  and  public  opinion  and  leaves  the 
stage  free  to  the  chance  emotion  of  the  moment. 
This  effect  of  rhythm  has  important  bearing  on 
the  dance-hall  problem. 

4.  Another  function  of  rhythm,  which  also  has 
direct  bearing  on  the  problem  of  social  dancing,  is 
seen  in  its  making  possible  the  great  get-together 
fusion  of  different  minds  and  temperaments.  Only 
in  obedience  to  its  spell  does  this  fusion  take  place. 
When  people  sing,  or  march,  or  dance  together 
each  knows  with  accuracy  what  all  the  rest  are 
doing  and  going  to  do,  and  in  great  part  how  they 
feel  about  it.  And  each  knows  that  the  other 
knows — and  so  on.  To  the  depth  that  the  song 
or  movement  goes  the  mutual  understanding  is 
complete;  and  the  common  consciousness  goes 
deeper  and  deeper  with  repetition— a  ripple,  a  wave, 
a  ground  swell,  until  the  whole  emotional  being 
of  each  member  of  the  company  swings  to  the  same 
pulsation  like  a  tidal  wave.  The  religious  dance 
culminating  in  the  religious  orgy  was  one  of  the 
earliest  social  functions.  Almost  every  great  social 
movement  has  been  set  to  music,  from  the  musike 
of  the  Greeks  to  modern  ragtime  and  from  Luther's 
hymn  to  the  Carmagnole.     Think  what  the  Mar- 


RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION  13 

seillaise  stands  for.  The  story  of  rhythm  has  al- 
most been  tfle  story  of  civiHzation.  I  even  beheve 
that  there  is  significance  in  the  fact  that  the  great 
rowing  nations,  the  people  of  the  /Egean,  of  the 
Baltic,  of  the  German  Ocean,  with  their  training 
in  rhythmic  cooperation,  have  been  the  great 
democratic  nations  of  the  world. 

Here  we  have  an  instinct  protean  in  its  mani- 
festations, which  has  among  its  powers  a  hypnotic 
influence,  the  power  of  abolishing  social  conven- 
tions, of  putting  to  sleep  the  conscience,  the  brain 
— a  power  that  has  manifested  itself  in  orgies  of 
many  sorts,  in  religious  and  social  frenzies  cul- 
minating often  in  human  sacrifice,  from  the  first 
tribal  ceremony  down  to  the  horrors  performed 
to  the  cry  of  ca  ira.  And  it  is  this  aboriginal  un- 
tamed power,  coming  up  out  of  the  great  sea  of  our 
subconscious  nature,  that  is  turned  loose  in  our 
dance  halls  without  any  effective  regulation  or 
restraint. 

What  are  we  to  do  about  this  situation?  The 
answer,  I  think,  is  to  be  found  in  the  final  function 
of  rhythm  in  our  life.  There  is  one  good  fairy 
left  to  make  her  gift. 

5.  Rhythm  is  the  common  element  in  all  the 
arts,  the  true  parent  of  the  Muses,  who  are  simply 
the  different  incarnations  in  which  the  god  delights 
and  satisfies  mankind.  So  that  in  discussing  rhythm 
we  are  considering  not  the  dance  problem  alone 
but  the  whole  question  of  art  and  what  to  do  with 
it.  Dancing  is  the  primal  expression  of  the  rhyth- 
mic impulse  and  always  at  the  core  of  it.  It  is  as 
dancing  that  this  instinct  first  appears  in  the  child. 
It  is  as  motion,  not  primarily  as  sound  or  sight, 
that  it  always  appeals  to  us.  It  is  the  reminiscence 
of  motion  in  music  or  poetry  or  architecture  that 
makes  its  fascination.  Chopin  derived  a  part  of 
his  inspiration  from  Fanny  Elsler's  dancing.  Music 
is  simply  dancing  freed  from  the  limitations  of 
anatomy. 

Rhythm  is  less  obvious  in  the  arts  that  act  upon 


14  RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION 

us  through  the  eye.  But  these  also  reach  us  most 
intimately,  come  nearest  to  our  feelings  by  what 
they  suggest  to  hearing  and  the  sense  of  motion. 
Action  is  the  form  in  which  we  live;  and  that  which 
touches    us — moves    us  we    say — has    roots    in 

motion — that  is,  in  rhythm. 

You  cannot  abolish  rhythm.  It  is  of  the  stuff 
of  which  our  lives  are  made.  You  cannot  safely 
leave  it  to  direct  itself.  What  is  our  safest  course? 
Where  is  it  a  benefit,  a  creator  of  beauty,  an  en- 
hancer of  our  life,  and  where  does  it  become  a 
danger  or  a  drug? 

I  believe  that  the  myth  of  Bacchus  contains  the 
answer  to  our  question — Bacchus,  the  god  of  art, 
the  god  of  wine,  the  god  of  life  and  beauty,  the 
god  of  the  great  primal  forces  that  well  up  in  us — 
of  song  and  ecstasy — the  god  that  inspires  us  and 
makes  us  mad;  the  great  god  of  rhythm  who  both 
entrances  and  intoxicates.  The  Greeks  were  very 
conscious  of  this  problem.  Their  education  was 
built  on  music,  as  they  called  it,  that  is,  on  rhythm 
in  its  various  forms.  They  knew  what  art  was  if 
any  one  has  ever  known. 

And  they  knew  its  dangers,  and  prayerfully  con- 
sidered in  what  direction  safety  lies.  They  even 
had  their  Puritans,  of  whom  Plato  is  an  illustrious 
example.  And  their  conclusion  is  expressed  in  this 
great  myth — the  myth  of  the  great  god  Bacchus, 
whom  the  Thebans  imprisoned  and  who,  in  revenge 
for  such  mistreatment,  drove  the  king  and  people 
mad.  In  that  story  is  compressed  the  conclusion 
of  what  was  both  the  most  artistic  and  the  most 
philosophic  race  the  world  has  seen.  Our  safety, 
according  to  the  Greeks,  is  found  in  receiving  the 
great  god  of  life  and  beauty,  of  dance  and  song 
and  rhythm,  in  listening  to  his  message  and  obey- 
ing it;  danger  lies  in  the  attempt  to  lock  up  the  god 
and  pretend  he  is  not  there.  ^ 

It  is  not  enough  simply  to  receive  the  god.  The 
world's  great  mistakes  in  dealing  with  him  through 

I  See  Gilbert  Murray,  The  Ri«c  of  the  Greek  Epic. 


RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION  15 

all  the  ages  have  come  from  supposing  that  passive 
reception  will  be  enough.  The  essence  of  our  piety 
is  in  its  activity.  Inspiration  must  stir  up  achieve- 
ment, not  put  to  sleep. 

The  alternation  between  the  denial  of  the  god 
and  his  too  passive  reception — between  license  and 
Puritanism — has  been  going  on  from  the  days  of 
the  Greeks  down  to  the  present  time,  and  doubt- 
less it  was  an  old  story  when  the  Greek  myth  grew 
up.  Following  the  period  of  ancient  art,  through 
the  long  Middle  Ages,  Puritanism  reigned.  The 
ascetic  was  the  ideal,  and  it  was  thought  holy  to 
deny  the  flesh  in  every  form.  Human  nature  at 
last  rebelled,  and  there  came  the  renaissance,  the 
rebirth  of  man,  of  the  humanities,  the  rediscovery 
of  beauty  and  of  art.  Then,  once  again,  the  god 
was  too  strong  for  the  people,  or  their  obedience 
was  too  passive.  Art  descended  into  sensuality, 
and  we  had  another  Puritan  reaction.  And  now, 
once  more,  the  god  denied  by  us,  as  by  the  ancient 
Thebans,  is  breaking  from  his  prison,  appearing 
in  his  cruder  form  and  threatening  to  drive  us  mad. 

Human  virtue,  it  seems,  is  like  a  hotel  blanket. 
When  you  cover  your  feet  it  comes  off  your  shoul- 
ders. When,  feehng  that  you  are  too  decollete  for 
comfort  and  that  the  higher  interests  are  being 
neglected,  you  pull  it  up  about  your  neck,  it  comes 
ofi^  your  feet,  until  human  nature  revolts  against 
the  cold.  So  the  race  has  alternated  between 
license  and  Puritanism.  The  solution  is  that  of 
the  Kansas  law — that  hotel  blankets  must  be  long 
enough,  (Kansas,  you  know,  has  had  some  expe- 
rience with  Bacchus  and  is  something  of  an  expert 
in  this  matter.)  We  must  stretch  our  virtue  until 
it  will  cover  human  nature  as  it  is;  must  learn  not 
to  deny  the  god  but  to  receive  him  heartily,  and 
grant  him  positive  constructive  service — take  this 
great  element  of  rhythm  and  work  it  into  forms 
of  beauty  as  an  essential  part  of  life. 

Specifically,  the  danger  is  in  the  inartistic,  the 
unformed.      It   is   the   too   simple    rhythm    that   is 


i6  RHYTHM  AND  RFXREATION 

hypnotic,  the  rhythm  to  which  you  lie  passive — 
that  requires  no  eft'ort  of  attention — a  lullaby  to 
the  moral  and  restraining  faculties.  I  saw  at  the 
World's  Fair  in  Chicn<!;()  a  West  Coast  Indian  chief 
who  could  in  a  few  minutes  make  his  people  nearly 
crazy  over  a  simple  bang  bang  on  a  packing  case. 
The  hysteria  at  football  games  is  produced  by 
cheering  based  on  the  same  principle.  It  is  the 
same  with  the  hypnotic  forms  of  political  or  pulpit 
oratory.  "Let  the  people  rule.  Let  the  people 
rule.  Let  the  people  rule."  At  the  thousandth 
repetition  you  begin  to  feel  that  it  has  some  vast 
portentous  meaning  in  it.  Anaesthesia  comes  with 
the  simple  recurring  rhythm,  the  swing  that  goes 
on  forever,  the  sound  that  carries  you  upon  its 
waves,  that  puts  you  to  sleep  in  a  world  where 
there  are  no  longer  any  outlines,  where  there  are 
no  landmarks,  no  fixed  facts,  no  hard  realities — 
only  a  feeling  without  form,  a  drifting  on  the  in- 
finitely succeeding  waves.  It  is  the  ca  ira  that 
intoxicates,  the  repetition  that  narrows  the  active 
consciousness  down  to  a  pin  point  of  attention, 
while  the  emotion  generated  keeps  piling  up  until 
it  reaches  the  bursting  point  or  overflows.  It  is 
the  dismissal  of  activity  toward  any  concrete  end, 
of  concentrated  attention,  or  any  effort  of  the  mind. 

Danger  is  in  the  too  simple  rhythm.  But  con- 
tained in  every  rhythm  there  is  a  message  of  in- 
finite significance — calling  for  unending  richness  of 
expression.  It  is  in  deciphering  and  elaborating 
this  finer  meaning  that  safety  lies.  Your  ca  ira 
must  get  down  to  concrete  patriotism,  must  con- 
descend to  schools  and  roads  and  drains  and  charity 
conferences,  and  to  see  whether  the  town  will  issue 
bonds  for  a  new  pumping  station.  And  your  char- 
ity conferences  and  the  rest  must  still  feel  the  throb 
and  pulsation  of  the  ca  ira. 

This  concrete  and  infinite  ideal  of  beauty  is 
locked  in  every  form  of  rhythm — in  dancing  among 
the  rest.  Safety  is  in  pursuit  of  this  ideal.  It  is 
evermore  the  passive  that  intoxicates,  active  obedi- 


RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION  17 

ence  that  saves.  So  long  as  it  includes  a  striving 
after  musical  expression,  every  art— including  social 
dancing  itself — is  a  satisfaction  more  than  an 
excitement,  a  safety  rather  than  a  danger.  Wis- 
dom is  not  in  turning  a  deaf  ear  to  the  voice  but 
in  religious  listening  to  catch  the  fuller  message 
that  it  bears.  Where  attention  is  fixed  upon  the 
reading  and  realization  of  the  ideal  there  will  be 
no  vertigo,  the  whirling  dervish  effects  of  rhythm 
will  be  avoided. 

Girls  should  be  taught  dressmaking,  the  art  in 
which  most  interest  is  taken  and  most  money  spent 
at  the  present  day,  the  true  intention  of  which, 
from  Praxiteles  and  Botticelli  down  to  Worth,  is, 
and  has  been,  not  to  banish  beauty  but  to  inter- 
pret it.  Such  teaching  will  both  release  a  power 
of  expression  and  emancipate  from  foreign  fashion- 
makers  and  the  monstrosities  they  now  impose 
upon  us. 

Evil  has  come  to  us  not  from  art  out  from  the 
absence  of  it.  It  is  the  bald  uncultivated  rhythm 
that  puts  the  soul  to  sleep.  Safety  is  in  the  elab- 
orated, the  highly  wrought.  Even  coquetry — the 
frankly  developed  art  of  sex  attraction — is,  I  be- 
lieve, a  safety  on  the  whole.  The  spirit  of  an  Irish 
dance,  a  Scotch  ballad  of  flirtation  is  a  spirit  of 
purity  as  well  as  beauty. 

Creative  exertion  draws  off  emotion  mto  con- 
structive channels,  finding  new  forms  of  beauty  in 
the  unending  pursuit  of  the  ideal.  A  principal  use 
of  sex  attraction  is  to  be  wrought  into  the  infinite 
forms  of  art. 

In  conclusion,  let  us  not  be  too  fearful  or  too 
negative.  Life,  upon  the  whole,  is  good,  not  bad. 
It  was  made  for  living,  not  to  be  cast  aside.  The 
mutual  attraction  of  boy  and  girl,  that  has  in  it 
not  only  the  physical  continuation  of  the  race, 
but  also  the  perpetuation  of  the  family  and  of 
happy  infancy,  that  has  in  it  also  great  part  of 
the  interest  and  beauty  of  our  lives,  is  not  a  power 
to  be  decried  or  fought  against.     We  believe  in  life, 


1$  RHYTHM  AND  RECREATION 

not  death;  in  art,  not  in  asceticism.  We  welcome 
the  love  song  of  the  bird,  the  blossom  on  the  tree. 
We  believe  that  wings  were  made  for  flying,  the 
heart  of  a  man  for  the  heart  of  a  maid,  and  that 
the  object  of  it  all — to  be  furthered  by  us  and  not 
obstructed — is  that  they  might  have  life  and  that 
they  might  have  it  more  abundantly. 


THE  AMERICAN  HOME   SERIES 

NORMAN  E.  RICHARDSON,  Editor 


1.  The  Nation's  Challenge  to  the  Home 

2.  How  One  Real  Mother  Lives  with  Her  Children 

3.  Parenthood  and  Heredity 

4.  The  Roots  of  Disposition  and  Character 

5.  The  First  Year  in  a  Baby's  Life 

6.  Thumb-Sucking 

7.  The  Education  of  the  Baby  Until  It  Is  One  Year  Old 

8.  First  Steps  Toward  Character 

9.  The  Second  and  Third  Years 

10.  The  Education  of  the  Child  During  the  Second  and 

Third  Years 

11.  The   Mother  as   Playfellow  (Years  One,  Two,  and 

Three) 

12.  Problems  of  Temper 

13.  The  Problem  of  Fighting 

14.  The  Government  of  Young  Children 

15.  The  Punishment  of  Children 

16.  The  Home  Kindergarten 

17.  The  Religious   Nurture   of  a  Little   Child  (Years 

Four  and  Five) 

18.  The  Nervous  Child 

19.  On  Truth  Telling   and  the   Problem   of  Children's 

Lies 

20.  The    Government    of    Children    Between    Six    and 

Twelve 

21.  The  Dramatic  Instinct  in  Children 

22.  Dramatics  in  the  Home 

23.  Table  Talk 

24.  Sunday  in  the  Home 

25.  A  Year  of  Good  Sundays 

26.  Picture  Hour  in  the  Home 

27.  Story-Telling  in  the  Home 

28.  Music  in  the  Home 

29.  Training  in  Thrift 

30.  "What   to    Say"  in   Telling    the    Story    of    Life's 

Renewal 

31.  Sex  Discipline  for  Boys  in  the  Home 

32.  Youth's  Outlook  Upon  Life 
31.  Building  for  Womanhood 
34.  Rh\thm  and  Recreation 

19 


id 


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